The historic mills of Granby, Olympia and Whaley Street designed this monument to provide a larger than life-size impression of the mill worker experience. The Fales & Jenks spinning frames, used in the mills up until the1930s, are in silhouette cut out of 1/2 inch Corten (rusting) steel. The larger-than-life-size mill workers are porcelain enamel panels, details taken from Lewis Hine’s famous Child Labor Photos from 1919. The sculpture is 22 feet long, 10 feet high, and weighs over 5 tons.
The sculpture was designed to be the centerpiece for a history park. The mill village neighborhoods have long wanted to tell our story to the new residents of our vibrant community, as well as it’s many visitors. We hope this park and art work will inspire people to learn more about the rich cultural and economic contributions of the cotton mill communities to our state’s history. Our goal was to establish, in a park setting, a dramatic sculptural centerpiece designed to provide a larger than life-sized impression of the mill worker experience and to provide an anchor for four interpretive wayside signs designed to convey the historical, architectural and cultural significance of our proud downtown Columbia community.